


No Man is an Island

by brokenmemento



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beaches, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Post-Divorce, Rain, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22444111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: Zelda and her roommate Lilith have been fighting with this thing for five years. With the rain comes absolution. AKA the Madam Spellman as Grace and Frankie AU.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman & Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith
Comments: 13
Kudos: 69
Collections: Madam Spellman 2020 Challenge





	No Man is an Island

**Author's Note:**

> *Prompt 4 for Madam Spellman challenge: AU  
> I don't feel like you really will have to have seen Grace and Frankie to get this. If you haven't though, Zelda is the emotionally closed-off alcoholic who is learning to feel a lot of complex things about said roommate and Lilith is the kooky chaotic one who is loveable beyond all reason. When you put them together? Magic happens.  
> **Little Easter eggs to connect back to actual cannon  
> ***Title taken from the John Donne poem of the same name

Zelda stares out across the expanse, watching the rolling ocean waves and taking the sound of them into her soul. The sun is warm and the sea breeze licks the contours of her face, deposits the salty marine air on her skin. 

One hand rests atop the handle of the turquoise Adirondack chair and the other rests in the firm grip of a time-worn hand, beautiful fingers curling and holding on tightly. Connected. Together. It feels bigger than just the two of them. As if the universe finally righted and aligned itself with the way it was always supposed to be. 

Moving her eyes from the horizon, Zelda looks down at their entwined hands, at the golden rings that adorn digits, the smooth skin around knuckles and sinews and bones. The veins are there too, lifeblood, pulsing throughout a body that has become inexorable from her own existence. 

It hasn’t always been this way. 

There was a time where she disliked the hand she holds and the body it is attached to with such vehemence, that she refused to be in the same room as her. In the past, their interactions had been heated, charged with electric energy that seemed to burn down anything and anyone that was around them. 

They fought, they slung barbs, they tried not to occupy the same space for any longer than they had to, despite their husbands being in the same line of work. She a Blackwood, her a Morningstar. The whole of the town had known the two men and the women that had stood by them for years, knows them still in many circles despite the defunctness of the original dynamic. 

One day, those said men did what men always do-they grew bored of their dutiful wives and found the luster and excitement away from the women, leaving the two of them cast off and floundering for some sense of self and home. 

The property had been the only solution Zelda could think of since her children were all too busy these days. Ambrose had latched himself on to the wild energy of Prudence. Sabrina, as much as she was capable of, had some version of happiness with Nick. Even Hilda herself had left Zelda for greener pastures, a different life, and luck (be it bad or good then) had thrown her in with Lilith. 

Lilith, whose maddeningly lackadaisical way of living had brought Zelda to her knees time and time again, wondering how anyone could look at the world the way she did when things were the way they were. No, Zelda had never loved life the way Lilith did, had never been kind to herself in a way Lilith seemed accustomed to, known by herself so well, she didn’t waste time dwelling on conformity and others opinions of her. She lived life how she wanted to. On her own terms. 

And, Zelda supposes, that’s what had softened her on Lilith. Each day the sun rose over the waters outside the home, Lilith wasn’t exactly who she had been. She wasn’t the pain, the chore, the bother. Adjectives changed with time and now, were more like  _ friend _ and  _ lifeline _ and  _ soulmate _ . 

No one could have predicted it, not even Zelda herself. Zelda Phiona Blackwood, née Spellman, didn’t let the world in. She was a pillar, strong, mysterious, unapproachable and untouchable to those who knew her. She clung to her vices of cigarettes and whiskey, true self hidden behind layer upon layer no one could ever get to. 

Until Lilith. 

It had taken losing everything, resisting the arrival of change, fighting tooth and nail to dismiss her and retreat into a solitude Zelda had thought would befit her life until it ended. The order of things saw fit to give her another way, an alternative to being alone. 

Oh, how long had it taken to get here? Forever and a day or only a few meager years? Zelda tries not to feel the weight of it all at once, squeezes Lilith’s hand and listens to the gulls cawing above their heads. Down the shoreline, a seal sounds and everything is so alive.

“Rain’s coming,” Lilith breaks the silence of their mouths. 

Zelda squints and looks up, not a cloud in the serene blue sky. She laughs a little, used to the outlandish tales Lilith seems to have an abundance of. “There’s no sign of it at all,” she rolls her eyes. “Not to mention we’ve been in a drought for as long as I can recall.” This is just another of her hunches. Which usually proves true…

Lilith turns to her then with a smirk, then stands up to block the sun in Zelda’s eyes while holding her hands out in wait. Sagging her shoulders a bit, Zelda lets herself be helped up and they walk back toward the beach house hand in hand. 

Once inside, Lilith makes a snack tray, loudly pulling various items from the deep recesses of the cabinets. Zelda lounges on the couch, a glass of whiskey in her hand and taking a sip every now and again. Condensation begins to pool on the glass making its own rain shower down its surface. 

The drink calms her always rattled nerves. Lilith plopping beside her does the same. So funny to think that only a few short years ago, she had the exact opposite effect. 

The remote lies on the table and Lilith holds it under her chin with an eyebrow raise. “So what’s on the docket for this evening’s viewing experience?” She doesn’t wait for Zelda to answer. “ _ Invasion of the Body Snatchers _ ?” There’s a hopeful little grin on her face. 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Lilith. We’ve watched that about forty times. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were obsessed.” Lilith makes a pouting face, but Zelda is having none of it. “It’s my turn to pick.”

The screen flickers on with  _ The Bride of Frankenstein _ instead and Zelda tries not to let on that she notices Lilith still pouting beside her. It works until about mid-movie when there is a clap of thunder and they both jump. Zelda glances to the wide double doors leading out to the deck and watches the droplets hit the glass in quick succession. 

“You totally jumped just then, mid-scene and mid clap,” Lilith’s lips slowly upturn. 

“Did not,” Zelda denies vehemently, straightening her shoulders a little more. 

“If you’re scared, I can protect you from the monsters,” she says seriously and Zelda has to laugh. 

“The only monster in this house is you when you insist on telling me the story of how your tent exploded at some hippie commune,” Zelda answers back. 

“It wasn’t a tent, it was a hut. And that was no hippie commune, it was a “witch cult” in the woods, which if I’m being honest-those ladies get a really bad rap for no reason. I had gone to it to reach back to my roots, realign my outer self with the inner self I used to be, which they were teaching me. Before I knew it…” Lilith makes a concussion boom with her mouth and mimics a mushroom cloud with her hands, “kaboom.”

“Sounds like hell,” Zelda says with an eye roll.

“I’ve been to hell,” Lilith holds a finger up. “It is in fact not a witch cult hut, but the local high school I subbed at for all of one day, count it, 8 hours. There and the recurring nightmare that I have where Costco runs out of samples and I’m screaming in the middle of the store.”

“I refuse to believe it,” Zelda shakes her head and leans back against the couch. “You make this stuff up.”

Lilith is impossibly closer and her blue eyes look about as stormy as the ocean must at the moment. She’s looking at Zelda in that  _ way _ she’s always done, only now Zelda knows that the danger to that look is that she’s fallen in love with it. 

She hasn’t said it, they haven’t discussed what’s changed between them over time, but Zelda feels like they both know even though mum has been the word. They’ve chosen one another time and time again, through so many messes and men. Zelda’s still fresh from divorce and Lilith’s dropped two not so long ago-even Adam who had promised to show Lilith the world, something bigger outside of their town. But here they both are, together, back in the home they never meant to make with one another. They’ve got every night for the foreseeable future to spend just like this if they want to, however long that might be. The prospect of it brings Zelda to a precipice, toes stretched over the edge. 

Lilith pulls her in like a magnet, like the sun, and Zelda’s heart really stood no chance at all. It was never meant for her own body, for her own self. She’s had to find this out through other people’s touch and other’s looks and hearts too, yet it was always meant for Lilith. 

“I’ve got the world in my bones, Zelda. I speak what my heart tells me to,” Lilith says quietly. 

Zelda wants to ask why they haven’t let the organs in their chest tell it all outright, instead letting them whisper to one another, hoping the other would hear. Now though, an infernal flame burns hot and Zelda knows she won’t exit this night the same. 

“What does it tell you now?” she breathes and that’s really the last cohesive thought she gets to think because then Lilith is sending tiny puffs of air out her own mouth that touch Zelda’s lips. Her hand cups Zelda’s face and she stares into her eyes. 

“That I need to protect you from monsters for the rest of time. That I should have done this long ago.”

Then they’re kissing, the smooth glide of their mouths across one another like a wave breaking on the shoreline. Zelda’s body tingles everywhere Lilith touches and this is where she knows she will be during the end of days as she knows it-with Lilith by her side. 

Outside, the sky darkens and rain comes in earnest now. No longer the tiny patter on the shingles but a downpour and the world isn’t the only thing being watered after a period of desiccation. 

There are hands and teeth and lips and sighs. There is breath and lightening and skin. It’s like a flower blooming in her chest, the one that’s been growing because of Lilith for the last several years.

No, Zelda never intended this but as she tastes Lilith, it’s better than fine anyway. A fine life to continue living on into the future. One where rain hits beach house windows. Where Adirondack chairs sit full on clear summer evenings, and hands are full too. Where she and Lilith can be together like they were always destined to be. 


End file.
